


Didn't Want To Be Anyone's Ghost

by Eisenschrott



Series: The OT3 That Never Was [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bittersweet, Family, Homecoming, Jealousy, Multi, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 19:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14900168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eisenschrott/pseuds/Eisenschrott
Summary: A brief tense discussion in the Veers household after the war, followed by an unexpected visit.





	Didn't Want To Be Anyone's Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Anyone's Ghost_ by The National.

Max tiptoed out of the room, in the warm low-intensity glow of the stars projector. He halted a few seconds on the threshold, casting one last look at the crib and its surroundings: everything was safe. The sleeping baby breathed evenly and quietly. Pastel-colored holographic stars moved in a slow rotation around the crib.

He quietly shut the door behind him and went to the living room, where the light was still on. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the holoterminal on and Eliana’s absent gaze as she watched the broadcast slumped on the couch.

But it was just a movie, not the HoloNet News. Some romantic comedy with droids.

Max sat down next to her. Eliana jumped a bit, and took the headphones off her ears. “Sorry, this film’s so boring I zoned out,” she said. “How’s Tim?”

“Fast asleep.” He leaned in to kiss Eliana’s forehead. “We should follow her lead. Don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh, are you?”

“Yeah.”

“Believe me, Tim is a walk in the park compared to how Zev was like.”

Max took the gut punch in silence. “So, shall we go to bed, too?”

“You go ahead. I’m not sleepy.” She crossed her legs and arms, fixing her unsmiling eyes on the soundless holograms.

“What’s wrong?”

She shook her head.

“Eli.”

“Nothing.”

“ _Eli_.”

She shot him a pointed, angry look, then turned to the holoterminal again. “They broadcast a special reportage before this film. It was about what the Empire did on Kashyyyk. Slavery, firebombs, bio-weapon experiments.”

Max glanced at the holograms: a KX droid with starbirds painted on his shoulders in place of the Imperial crest was kneeling in front of a Zabrak guy and offering him a bouquet of flowers. “I guess it was awful.”

Eliana drew in a sharp breath, but did not speak until several seconds. “Max. Are they going to… Did you ever do something that…?”

“If you mean the New Republic and the war crimes trials, I told you already. I plea-bargained and they will leave us alone.”

“You don’t cop a bargain out of things like that.”

“Well, I did.”

Eliana’s lower lip quivered. Hands on her thighs, she clenched her fists around the headphones.

“Hey, look at me. Eli?”

She slowly turned to face him. Tried her best to glower, but tears were glimmering in her eyes already. Max hated himself for making her cry, this time and the Force knew how many when he was away to the frontlines.

“Whatever despicable thing was done on Kashyyyk or anywhere else, I wasn’t part of it. I was not one of them.”

She said nothing, but the glower remained, superimposing his old Imperial uniform on his slacks and pap-stained shirt. A shiver ran down Max’s spine; he’d hardly ever experienced regret or shame for his military service in the months between his voluntary discharge and the battle of Endor, but since the war’s end—since the trials—he had started growing uncomfortable. Even if he had been acquitted of the worst charges, and  _his_  trial had not been a live broadcast to the whole Republic-controlled galaxy ending in a death sentence.

It still puzzled him that Generals Organa and Rieekan, the Hoth veterans, had not proposed that verdict for him.

“Not one of them,” Eliana hissed. “Then what were you? A Rebel? A bounty hunter on the Hutts’ payroll?”

“I was no Tolruck or Tarkin or Ssaria, I was just a soldier—”

“You were just following orders, yes. That’s what those monsters in the reportage said.”

Max was fairly sure that, by ‘monsters’, she did not mean the Wookiees. “And the orders I followed were nothing but war, even when I served under Lord Vader. No wholesale slaughter.” Memories flashed at the edge of his mind: hanged sentients swaying in smoky wind, the green blasts that mowed down a line of hand-cuffed convicts, stormtroopers kicking hungry younglings away from the rations queue over expired food stamps. The hangmen and the rationers all belonged to his brigade.

“That’s…” He took one of Eliana’s hands, grounding himself in the touch. “That’s what Mon Mothma said. Nobody will argue with that. And I did tell them stuff they found useful to get the real rotten eggs.” Nobody, not even Madine, the ex-Imperial, had threatened to retaliate against his wife and his baby daughter—no mention of his adult son at all—in case he didn’t cooperate. But Max wasn’t so stupid as to miss the implication.

Eliana squeezed his hand in return, the headphones rolling to the floor at her feet. “Sometimes I’m afraid of you,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of letting you around Tim.”

Max steeled himself against a shudder that felt like a lightsaber slicing flesh off his back. “Believe me, I understand,” he managed not to let any spite bleed out aloud. “Was it like this when Zev was little?”

“No. I didn’t know so many ugly things, back then. You didn’t talk about the war. And you were never around long enough, anyway.”

He gave her hand a hard squeeze. Not sure if it was regret or anger that powered it. Eliana’s bones were small in his big fist, and she winced. He slackened his grip, cheeks burning with shame.  _This is why she’s afraid of you_.

Yet, Eliana did not pull her hand out of his.

“I would never hurt our daughter,” Max said. “Nor you. I have already done that far more than…” He trailed off as Eliana tore her face away. Once again, deep down inside where neither New Republic officials nor Eliana could reach, he missed war. Even the boring parts and the swampy planets. Just like during the war he used to miss home and his wife.

He forced out a smile. “Firmus would rise from the dead to chop me into pieces and feed me to a rancor, if I hurt Tim.”

With her free hand, Eliana wiped her eyes. She returned the mouth-only smile to Max. “He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who likes kids.”

“At first, he didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would become smitten with an infantry general. And with the general’s lady at the same time.”

“He wasn’t smitten with me. He wanted to introduce me to Vader.” A glow of genuineness breathed life into her smile, but it flickered off in a heartbeat. “Goddesses, what sort of awful woman must I be to become smitten with men like you two? I should be afraid of letting  _myself_  around Tim.”

“Bollocks.”

“What if I ruin her life or… or I hurt her? I must have done something horribly wrong with Zev, too. It can’t have been all your fault.”

“You will  _not_  hurt Tim. Ever. And,” Max tried to lighten up the mood and derail it as fast as possible from Zev, “in matters of sexual preferences, plenty of sentients love scoundrel types.”

“ _Second in command to the worst war criminal in the Empire_  types stretch the concept of charming rogue a bit far, don’t you think?”

Max bit the inside of his lower lip, hard, tasting blood on his tongue, to hold back from speaking his mind:  _My wife—spewing Rebel propaganda—STOP IT!_  Instead he said, “Maybe I liked him because I’m a scoundrel, too.”

“I deserved you both,” she murmured, as if confessing to an evil deed.

Max welcomed the silence that followed, as she turned off the holoterminal and cuddled up to him. Warm, still, alive, breathing softly on his neck. When they held each other like this, he didn’t miss Firmus too much.

Her hands crept around his back and across his chest. He was too tired for love-making now, but stayed silent and let her have her way. Her fingers touched a crust of dried up baby food, hesitated, and slid downwards to insinuate themselves under the shirt. Discreetly, Max sucked his belly in. Eliana’s short nails drew circles on the skin and made hairs stand; her thumb reached below the slacks’ waist and dipped into his navel.

“Let’s go to sleep, Eli.”

She lay her other hand over his mouth. He kissed her palm, then shifted his face free. “I’m very tired,” he said. “Really.”

Her sultry expression saddened for an instant. She retreated her hands, kissed him on the lips and stood up. “I’m using the ‘fresher first.”

“Are you sure? I smell like a baby changing room and I might just fall asleep while you do your business.” Dumb joke all right, but it was a relief to make dumb poodoo jokes instead of discussing politics.

“Nice try, Maxie.” She padded to the ‘fresher, whipping off her shirt just before she disappeared into the corridor, a pale naked back and a cascade of wavy hair and the soft curve of a breast.

Max kept gazing at the spot where her half-nakedness had been, letting the faint stir of arousal fade off. He heard a muffled splash of water from the ‘fresher.

The doorcomm rang.

His head snapped up to the door. It had not been the intercom of the compound’s external gate.

“Maxie,” Eliana leaned in bare-chested from the corridor, a towel hanging around her neck, “did someone just—”

“Get into Tim’s room. Lock yourself up and don’t make any noise.”

Her eyes widened.

He tried not to raise his voice, “Hurry up.”

She hesitated for enough seconds, blinking, mouth wobbling in the attempt to word out protests or panic, that even the most ill-trained Rebel trooper would have blasted her to a crisp by the time she finally ran back down the corridor. Eliana just wasn’t good at following orders; no soldier material, his wife.

Which reminded him, he did not have a blaster. He glanced around the living room for a weapon.

The doorcomm rang again.

Max dashed to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and skulked to the door. His heart was racing; the adrenaline of the incoming fight erased, for the time being, the fear and worry of protecting his wife and child. To be honest, he’d missed this feeling.

He pressed the peephole video display key. The display materialized on the polished surface of the door at face height with the sentient outside: Human, male, just flicking up a wide-brimmed hat and pulling down a scarf.

Max stared him in the eye through the peephole. The knife slipped off his right hand and clattered to the floor. He slammed his palm on the lock and the door slid open.

“Fir— _oof_!” Max half-grunted, half-laughed as a scrawny ex-admiral in shabby civilian clothes threw himself into his arms and hugged him tighter than his shrimp-like build should allow.

Max returned the embrace, burying his face and smothering a few sobs in the crook of Firmus’ neck. He run his hands up and down the sides of Firmus’ slightly trembling upper body: just as warm and alive and tangible as Eliana. Plus the hard, angular shape of a concealed blaster under Firmus’ left armpit.

Max pulled up his head to look at him, hands cupping Firmus’ stubbly face. Firmus blinked as tears dripped from the corners of his eyes. “I’ve missed you,” he said in a quiet, broken voice that plunged a vibroblade in Max’s heart.

“Stars, so did I. How—why are you…? I thought you were dead—the  _Executor_ , Endor…?”

“I barely escaped with my life. Been hiding ever since.”

“With the Imperial remnants?”

Firmus shook his head. Before Max could ask another question, Firmus yanked him by the collar into a deep kiss, which Max surrendered to with a soft moan. Like in the old times. Firmus tasted of cigarette smoke, more pungent than he remembered; some of his teeth also had a more rugged shape than Max’s tongue remembered, as if they’d been reconstructed after a blunt trauma. He traced his thumb along Firmus’ jaw: scar lines ran deep and long under the bristly coat of stubble.

Firmus let out a throaty sigh into his mouth and dragged him backwards until they stood against the door, Firmus sandwiched between it to his back and Max to his front.

“You’ve grown fatter, luv,” Firmus breathed in-between light bites at Max’s lips.

“Shut up and kiss me harder.”

For seconds that felt like light-years they kept smooching, lapping and nipping at each other’s lips; Firmus’ hands roamed over Max’s chest and tugged the shirt up. A grin spread on Max’s face.  _Oh, I know what you want_. As soon as he felt Firmus’ right leg rubbing against his left, he grabbed it at the knee and lifted it to his hip. Their budding erections rubbed together through their clothes—

Firmus froze. Broke the kiss, looked over Max’s shoulder. “Greetings, missy.”

Max noticed a red laser spot quivering in the middle of Firmus’ forehead. He let go of his leg and turned around, his jaw hanging slack not just from the tongue wrestling.

Eliana was standing in the corridor threshold, holding up what looked like a blaster gun in both her hands. A small background part of his brain noticed she’d put her shirt back on.

“Eli, where did you get that?” he asked.

“My fieldwork toolbox.” She lowered the gun, but the glower she was leveling on Firmus was no less scorching than a plasma bolt.

“Since  _when_  did you need to carry a blaster to do…” Fuck, what was Eliana’s old job? “…groundwater prospecting?”

“It’s not a blaster, genius, it’s an infrared thermometer.” She held up the thing, pointed to the ceiling. It did look like a rather blocky and primitive kind of blaster.

“Clever thinking, missy,” said Firmus. “One can never be too careful.”

“We thought you died at Endor. Where have you been all this time?”

“Avoiding death. Max, do you mind if I take a seat? It’s been a long way from the Outer Rim.”

Max shot Eliana a look. She held it for a few moments, then rolled her eyes and gestured at the couch.

Hand in hand with Max, Firmus walked to the couch and flopped on it with a contented sigh. Max sat next to him on one side, Eliana to the other; she placed the infrared thermometer next to the headphones on the table and crossed her arms. “Why didn’t you ring from the gate?” she asked, sour-faced. “You gave us a scare.”

“Your front gate has a facial scanner. Which ought to have an uplink to the New Republic security databases. I figured a dozen police speeders popping up at your place in the dead of night would have been quite a worse scare. So I rigged the thing and got in unnoticed.”

“You’re an  _outlaw_?”

Piett snorted and stared down at his dirt-stained boots. “A deserter. From an Empire that is no more, no matter what Sloane and Hux delude themselves—”

“Oh, fuck!” Eliana leapt off the couch as if a stormtrooper in forest camouflage armor had plopped a Wookiee’s severed head on it. “Fuck, fuck,  _fuck_.” She started pacing around the table, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We’re sheltering a fugitive war criminal in our house. Bloody fantastic.”

Max flinched. “Eli, don’t—”

“Don’t you  _dare_  sugarcoat the banthacrap we’re swimming in, Maximilian. Just don’t.”

“I’m not a criminal, missy,” Firmus said, matching her glower.

“Oh, right. Second in command to Lord bloody Vader. After you explain to Mon Mothma, Ackbar and Organa that you were just a nice chap following orders, I bet they’ll let you go with an ear pull and a sermon on freedom of choice!”

Firmus swallowed, but did not avert his gaze. “That was never my plan to begin with.”

“And what is your  _actual_  cunning plan, Admiral?”

Max felt a stab in the gut at Eliana addressing him with his (former) rank rather than his name.

She went on, her voice rising, “Crash here and hide in our pantry forever?” She went silent and her face fell as a crying noise came in from the corridor.

Firmus started back and his right hand shot under the lapel of his coat. Max grabbed it and kept it still before he could draw the blaster. “Come with me, Firmus. There’s someone you need to meet.” When he met Eliana’s eyes, he mouthed at her to come along; she looked away. At least she didn’t try to stop them.

He led Firmus to Tim’s bedroom. As they peered into the crib, he saw that Tim was rubbing her eyes while she cried. “Sorry we woke you up, half-pint.” He lifted the baby in his arms; her cries sputtered to almost a stop, then resumed a bit quieter. Max started gently rocking her.

“Belated congratulations, Max.” Firmus’ expression had turned sad, older beyond his years.

“Thank you. Her name’s Timea, but we call her Tim.” Max planted a kiss on the reddish blond curls at the top of her head. “She’s almost six standard months old.”

“You and the missy surely didn’t waste your time.” He cleared his voice and spun on his heels. “Well, I better take my leave now.”

“Wait up.”

Firmus arrived to the threshold, stopped and turned to face him and the baby. “I’m sorry for intruding. It… it won’t happen again.”

“Do the math, sailor. She was born nine months after the last night you, Eli and I shared on the  _Executor_.”

A muscle twitched at the corner of Firmus’ mouth.

“We got her DNA tested. You’re her biological father, Firmus.”

Centimeter by centimeter, Firmus’ face morphed into a mask of unadulterated, gaping-eyed fright. Max had seen him this openly terrified no more than a couple times, when he was new to the Lady Ex and still getting used to Lord Vader’s presence. And to Lord Vader’s preferred method of summary execution.

Then Firmus’ eyes rolled upwards, and his body sagged. Eliana jumped behind him and grasped him before he fell, holding him up from under the armpit. If she felt up the blaster, she didn’t realize what it was or chose to ignore it.

“Told you,” she said, “he never struck me as a kid person.”

“It was a bit of a sudden revelation. I’m sure he’ll get over it.” He slowed his rocking as Tim toned her weeping down to a sleepy blubber.

“If he refuses to change her diapers, I’m comming the NR  _and_  the Imperial remnants all at once.” Eliana hauled Firmus’ limp form into the corridor. Towards the bedroom, not towards the living room. Max silently thanked whichever of the Hrönir goddesses presided over the virtue of clemency.

Tim fell asleep again at last. He lay her down in the crib, stretched his stiff arms, and headed to his and Eliana’s bedroom. He found the bedside lamps on and Firmus sprawled on the mattress, still dressed. Max quashed a lecherous desire to rip the clothes—and weapons—off of him while he lay there defenseless.

“Maxie?” Eliana walked up to him. “You said you were tired.”

“…Yes?”

“You didn’t seem tired while you were making out with him in the doorway.”

Max braced himself for a slap across the face, even wished for it. He bloody deserved it. Next thing he knew, Eliana’s shirt was gone, and he was shoved flat on the bed next to Firmus.


End file.
